Saturday, 29 December 2012

Virtual Teams and e-Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The advent of the virtual teams has facilitated the emergence and formation of new companies within the Net Economy which called e-Entrepreneurship. The terms of e-Entrepreneurship and virtual teams still are new in the scholarly papers. Therefore, this introductory presentation focuses on different aspects of virtual teams and e-entrepreneurship.

New Perspectives of Virtual Teams’ Collaboration

Abstract

This article describes new perspectives in virtual teams’ collaboration, to underline the actual trends and to identify their future development. These will be used for product lifecycle projects management and to diminish/avoid risks, to harmonize team members’ competencies (compatibility issues) to attend success in project development. The tools used for communication and real time research-work will increase companies’ competitiveness by optimizing the resources dedicated to different projects, teams and management systems. To improve the productivity and to facilitate the communication between projects team members, the new approach of virtual teams is based on the use of complex software platforms to improve collaborative design, learning and work processes.

Establishing Virtual R&D Teams: Obliged Policy

In a global and technology oriented world the requirements that products and services have to fulfill are increasing and are getting more complicated. Research and development (R&D) is becoming increasingly important in creating the knowledge that makes research and business more competitive. Companies are obliged to produce more rapidly, more effectively and more efficiently. In order to meet these requirements and to secure the viability of business processes, services and products R&D teams need to access and retrieve information from as many sources as possible. From the other perspective virtual teams are important mechanisms for organizations seeking to leverage scarce resources across geographic and other boundaries moreover; virtual collaboration has become vital for most organizations. This is particularly true in the context of designing new product and service innovation. Such collaboration often involves a network of partners located around the world. However at the R&D project level, dealing with such distributed teams challenges both managers and specialists. In new product development, it is necessary to put together the growing different capabilities and services with the goal, through cooperation between suppliers and customers, service providers and scientific institutions to achieve innovations of high quality. In this paper based on comprehensive literature review of recent articles, at the first step provides an primary definition and characterization of virtual R&D team; next, the potential value created by virtual R&D teams for new product development is explored and lastly along with a guide line for future study, it is argued that the establishing of virtual R&D teams should be given consideration in the management of R&D projects.

Abstract: Problem statement: Although, literature proves the importance of the technology role in the effectiveness of virtual Research and Development (R&D) teams for new product development. However, the factors that make technology construct in a virtual R&D team are still ambiguous. The manager of virtual R&D teams for new product development does not know which type of technology should be used. Approach: To address the gap and answer the question, the study presents a set of factors thatmake a technology construct. The proposed construct modified by finding of the field survey (N = 240). We empirically examine the relationship between construct and its factors by employing the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). A measurement model built base on the 19 preliminary factors that extracted from literature review. The result shows 10 factors out of 19 factors maintaining to make technology construct. Results: These 10 technology factors can be grouped into two constructs namely Web base communication and Web base data sharing. The findings can help new product development managers of enterprises to concentratein the main factors for leading an effective virtual R&D team. In addition, it provides a guideline for software developers as well. Conclusion: The second and third generation technologies are now more suitable for developing new products through virtual R&D teams. Number of Pages in PDF File: 6Keywords:Collaboration teams, questionnaires performance, cross-functional teams, product development, structural equation modeling, measurement model, literature reviewJEL Classification: L1,L11,L7, M11, M12, M1, M54, Q1, O1, O32, P42, P29, L17, Q31, Q32 Accepted Paper Series

Abstract: Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the driving engine behind economic growth. While SMEs play a critical role in generating employment and supporting trade, they face numerous challenges, the prominent among them are the need to respond to fasting time-to-market, low-cost and rapid solutions to complex organizational problems. Towards that end, research and development (R & D) aspect deserves particular attention to promote and facilitate the operations of SMEs. Virtual R & D team could be a viable option. However, literature shows that virtual R & D teaming in SMEs is still at its infancy. This article provides a comprehensive literature review on different aspects of virtual R & D teams collected from the reputed publications. The purpose of the state-of-the-art literature review is to provide an overview on the structure and dynamics of R & D collaboration in SMEs. Specifying the foundation and importance of virtualteams, the relationship between virtual R & D team and SMEs has been examined. It concludes with the identification of the gaps in the existing literatures and calls for future research. It is argued that setting-up an infrastructure for virtual R & D team in SMEs still requires a large amount of engineering efforts and deserves consideration at top level management. Number of Pages in PDF File: 16Keywords:Virtualteams, small and medium enterprises, literature reviewJEL Classification: M11, L15, L23, O14, Z Accepted Paper Series

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About Me

Nader Ale Ebrahim has
a Technology Management PhD degree from the Department of Engineering
Design and Manufacture, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya
(UM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He holds a Master of Science in the
mechanical engineering from University of Tehran, Iran.